Some interesting points alonsoisared, which I'd like to respond to:
There's been fucking huge protests over Brexit and none of them have achieved a thing.
I don't think the lack of wide scale protest today is down to being subservient or whatever. Primarily it's probably because it takes a bit longer than a few hours to arrange a massive protest nowadays.
I don't think anyone is bemoaning lack of protests
today or right this minute; the claim is that even if the government successfully subvert the democratic process, or put another way, pull a fast one, over the next few weeks, people will just sit there and take it, rather than rising up en masse in protest, despite claiming to be passionate about democracy.
At this stage we're all still hoping that MPs will be able to take control and neuter any of Cummings's shananigans, so influencing MPs rather than protesting a potential coup, is what is in the forefront of our minds. And I imagine there
will be some organised protests. There's the big one in October, but no doubt there'll be some before that if the government get their way
But also, is it not that this is what the people want? "The people" voted leave three years ago and I genuinely think they would vote the same way tomorrow, my instinct says probably by even more than the last time. For every person who voted Brexit who has been on the news saying they didn't realise what they voted for etc there's been a remainer saying that we should respect the vote.
Sure, but you'd still expect those who voted against and, separately, those who do not take kindly to the government trying to sideline Parliament, to make their voices heard.
I think people are tired of it. It's fucking boring. It doesn't help that you go on twitter and see some daft fucking idiot doing tours of Europe funded by her follower's contributions, singing songs on her acoustic guitar about how wonderful Europe is. It doesn't help that people who voted remain slag off the entire country, its history and its people. I'm no ultra patriot, I live and work in Spain and lots of fellow young English people here profess their shame at their nationality and its politics. They must have missed the Spanish police beating the shit out of the Catalan people for trying to have a vote. There is an attitude of "you're all fucking idiots and I hate this country" about remain voters that helps fuel the right wing bullshit about traitors and whatnot. The left needs to reclaim patriotism if they ever want to win the majority of the public over but at the moment it's a dirty word. The Welsh and Scottish are doing it with success but we continue to leak voters because of it.
Self-effacement is also part of the British character, though. We're not the US, we don't fetishise the nation in the same way; that's why very patriotic/nationalistic rhetoric sounds a bit icky to most of us. It's not that we don't care for our country - if there was an invasion you'd soon see that people do care - it's that being overdemonstrative about it is, well, not cricket.
And because of this, when people do become too demonstratively and vocally patriotic there's always more than a suspicion that this isn't positive, celebratory patriotism, but rather negative, destructive, intolerant, authoritarian and dangerous poison.
I do agree, though, that there's far too much anger and name-calling and intolerance and refusal to even try and understand other points of view - and believe me I am the biggest offender in this regard, so I'm not really having a go at anyone else but myself. It's a peculiarity of liberalism that it is incredibly intolerant and demanding of the 'other'. But that's a whole other subject.
For the record I obviously voted remain and I'm worried about what is to come in the next few months. I'm hoping with my employment I should be alright for a little while longer here at least but who knows. The enemies in all this are the absolute fucking wankers who put our country's future in jeapordy to win an election, and those absolute fucking wankers who have kept it all going for their own careers, statuses and monetary gain. But I don't hate the people of Britain who bought in to what they were sold. I probably did at the time of the vote but I see it differently now. You get caught up in social media, you see the worst of the right wing and you see the worst of the left. But it's normal, average working people who went out and voted for Brexit. If you met them in the pub you'd probably get along with most of them a dream and would agree to disagree on the politics, like we would've done in years gone by. Now though it's all insults and hatred.
The point here isn't that ordinary people should be blamed for voting Leave - many have had their views shaped by media reporting and outright lies; they were victims of manufactured dissent, if anything.
The problem is that these same people won't adjust their views when they are shown that they were wrong, that they were lied to etc. Doubling down on patent bollocks isn't a sign of being an innocent victim of an organised right wing coup; it's a sign of irresponsible pig-headedness or downright stupidity.
